Q:You answered about the UK Teuthologist but what about USA? I'm practically in the same boat as your UK follower, so I was wondering if you knew any in America. Absolutely love your blog btw!! Keep up the good work!!

demonicgateway-deactivated20170

squidscientistas:

So before I start, I think it’s important for me to say the following:  You shouldn’t try to get a job with any of these scientists ONLY because you think cephalopods are cool.  Cephalopods are obviously extremely cool, and for most of us that’s what sparked our interest in the first place, but the main drive to do science is deeper than that. Marine biologists are trying to answer very specific questions about the physiology, camouflage, symbiosis, immune systems, behavior, etc. about these animals.  Being successful as a squid biologist requires three main interests.

1) Interest in cephalopods (which I’m pretty sure most followers of this blog have in spades)

2) Interest in the questions this scientist is asking (e.g.  How do squid immune cells recognize specific bacterial species?(Me)  How does the microbial community of the female squid’s accessory nidamental gland protect squid eggs? (Andrea)  How do cuttlefish perceive their world, and then decide what the best camouflage pattern is for the situation? (Roger Hanlon)  Do bacteria colonize animals differently in zero gravity? (Jamie Foster)

3) Interest in the techniques used to answer these questions.  (e.g. Confocal microscopy/Protein purification/ Western Blotting (Me), Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH)/Reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) /Culturing of environmental isolates/ bacterial growth assays (Andrea), Behavior studies/ Computational processing of camouflage pattern/ fieldwork (Roger)

Working with cephalopods is VERY COMPETITIVE, so you need to make sure you’re building your resume as early as possible.  Get research experience any way you can and educate yourself using peer reviewed literature when you’re at the academic level that you can start to understand it.

So now on to the list of scientists, in no particular order (all underlined names are links to more info about them)

Roger Hanlon (Woods Hole, Massachusetts, MBL) Literally wrote the book on cephalopod behavior. He works on camouflage and how cuttlefish perceive their environment, how they choose what camouflage pattern to use, and also works on the skin structures that contribute to camouflage. There’s an internship program through the MBL that his lab participates in but it’s very competitive.

Margaret McFall-Ngai (Hawaii, University of Hawaii) Margaret is the mother of the squid/vibrio symbiosis. A member of the national academy of sciences, Margaret has been extremely influential in the study of symbiosis. Working for her will be very competitive. She’s a great role model as a powerful woman in science.   Her lab, along with Ned Ruby’s lab, work on many aspects of the squid/vibrio symbiosis.  Many (if not all) of the squid/vibrio community have come through her or Ned’s labs.  Here’s a piece on her from nature blogs written by Ed Yong 

Spencer Nyholm (Connecticut, UConn) Andrea and I work for Spencer, so you’ve probably seen our posts and have an idea of what we do, but I study how squid immune cells recognize specific bacterial species and Andrea studies how the microbial community of the female squid’s accessory nidamental gland can protect squid eggs.

Bethany Rader (Illinois, Southern Illinois University) Bethany is fantastic! She’s super friendly and excitable and just started her lab at SIU. She is one of our collaborators and previously did a post-doc in our lab. She’s working on the same thing I am, the role of the immune system in the squid/Vibrio symbiosis. 

Bill Gilly (California, Stanford) Works on many aspects of Humboldt squid biology.

Josh Rosenthal (Puerto Rico, University of Puerto Rico) Works on RNA editing in squid and octopus.  I’ve heard he’s a really friendly guy but haven’t met him personally (yet).

Charlie Chubb (California, UC Irvine) Charlie is one of the genuinely nicest guys I have ever had the opportunity to work with.  He collaborates with Roger Hanlon, working on “ understanding the processes by which the visible world is constructed by the brain”.  He’s a brilliant scientist and a wonderful guy. His work is all computer based though so there are no physical squid in his lab.

Aran Mooney (Woods Hole, Massachusetts, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) Aran works on many different animals, but squid and cuttlefish are among them.  His synopsis on his website is as follows “Our research is in the sensory biology of animals, primarily marine organisms.  Specifically I am interested in how these animals detect the world around them, what they detect (i.e., what’s important to the organism), and how these animals then relate to their environment (e.g., predator detection, prey localization, habitat identification, and conspecific communication).”

Cheryl Whistler (New Hampshire, University of New Hampshire) Squid/Vibrio symbiosis.  I believe also how microbes have evolved to better colonize animals in beneficial symbiosis.

Jamie Foster (Florida, University of Florida) Working on host/microbe interactions in the squid/vibrio system.  Along with other things, she’s studying the effect of gravity on microbial colonization.   She also works on stromatolites.

Jean Boal (Pennsylvania, Millersville University)  Since Jean is at  Millersville she may not take grad students (I know when I was an undergrad she was not accepting grad students).  She works on cephalopod behavior.

Sheila Castellanoz-Martinez (Mexico) Immune system of cephalopods, specifically octopus.  She’s currently a Post-doc, but may have a lab soon, I really have no idea, I just read a lot of her papers J

Shelley Adamo (Canada, Dalhousie Univeristy) Currently working on insect innate immunity/behaviour but has worked on cuttlefish in the past and may work on cuttlefish in the future.

Maria Castillo (New Mexico, New Mexico State University) Role of the immune system in the squid/vibrio symbiosis

Michele Nishiguchi (New Mexico, New Mexico State University) Evolution and marine symbiosis in the squid/vibrio system

For more information, Tonmo is a great resource for all things cephalopod. They have information about everything from having a cephalopod as a pet to working with cephalopods. Here’s the board on education and employment.

Good luck! Feel free to ask us any more questions!

How Smart Is an Octopus?

lowindustrial:

In other words, an encounter with an octopus can sometimes leave you with the strong feeling that you’ve encountered another mind.

But that mind—if mind it is—has evolved along a route entirely different from the one that led to our own. The most-recent common ancestors of humans and octopuses lived about 600 million years ago, early in the evolution of animal life. Although much about our joint ancestors is obscure, they were probably small wormlike creatures that lived in the sea. This makes octopuses very different from other animals we suspect of sentience, such as dolphins and dogs, parrots and crows, which are much more closely related to us. In the words of Peter Godfrey-Smith, “If we can make contact with cephalopods as sentient beings, it is not because of a shared history, not because of kinship, but because evolution built minds twice over. This is probably the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien.”

(via lowindustrial-deactivated201808)

Q:Can you cuddle squids? Like, would they like that? Is that an ok thing to do? B/c I really love them and they look so soft and I really want to hug them.

Anonymous

squidscientistas:

I am 100% with you on wanting to hug squid and cuttlefish like my cats but we can’t because they have squishy bodies and very delicate skin which is easy to damage, leaving them vulnerable to infection. So sadly, it’s pretty unethical to hug them. Cuttlefish also have delicate cuttlebones which if you hug hard enough, can break. This is a struggle cephalopod biologists face every day, but we can not waver. Just talk to them and look at them then go home and hug a cat or dog. Octopuses are more touchable, but it’s best to let them touch you, not you touch them. Their suckers aren’t as delicate as their skin so if they hug you that’s somewhat kosher (but be careful sometimes they get curious and explore by biting with their extremely sharp beaks so that’s a risk you need to be willing to take if you accept an octopus hug).

Tl;dr don’t touch cephalopods, it’s bad practice.